


It's not that scary

by Eatgreass



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Buried Alive, Disease, Gen, Overwork, Religious Imagery, Self Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Too Much Trauma, Transphobia, alcohol mention, dirt/filth, dysphoria mention, unreality, yeah pretty much all of the trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:20:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 9,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27799120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eatgreass/pseuds/Eatgreass
Summary: An examination of beauty in the 14 fears.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. Oblivion

I don’t see how anybody could be afraid of the vast. My lifeblood, the comforting shroud of nothingness. Looking up into the endless sky filled with that wonderful nothingness, I feel more alone, and more fulfilled than I have ever before. 

My attachment to the infinite free space started much earlier than now, you see. I was not coerced or manipulated into joining the sky. I have anxiety. The kind where you have to curl up in a ball, hyperventilating, unable to suck enough air into your lungs, and just wait for the pain of  _ being  _ to end. I feel absolutely and unfathomably crushed, when my body crushes me against nothing at all. The walls are closing in on me, and there is no way out of that space too small for my own body. Similarly, there is freedom in the nothing. The vastness, gloriousness of looking upwards and outwards as far as the eye can see, and seeing nothing but your own reflection, and the skyline. If I could fall forever, never hit the bottom of that great abyss, but only plunge deeper, and deeper, and deeper in, I would take that offer without a second thought. Wouldn’t you? 

We are ants. The human race is simply one colony, waiting to be crushed by the inevitability of the foot, or the fire, or the stream of water. The child destroys the colony, seeing them as no more than a plaything. Not a sentient mass of living, breathing animals that have worked for years to create what they have now, but a plaything for that which is much bigger than us. The entire earth is but a colony of ants at the mercy of some small child. Nothing I do matters, nothing you do will ever matter, and if the earth imploded this very instant, well, nothing of significance would be lost in that fire.

So many people don’t understand that. The simple fact that no matter how hard you try, how many people you save, you will simply not make a difference. So why not revel in your own smallness? Take comfort in it, take joy in the fact that no matter what you do, the mistakes you make, the triumphs you earn, all of that dies with you. If it doesn’t die with you, it will die with your children, or your grandchildren, or if you are a particularly notable figure, perhaps you will die with an era. Or with a planet. But eventually, all memory of you will be lost, and you will fade into oblivion. 

You have to understand, millions, and billions, and trillions of years is a tiny minutia of time, because time and space are infinite, and you are horribly finite. 

So take comfort in your nothingness. I do, after all.


	2. Bonfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The desolation.

I think the flames saved me. Say what you want, tell me that I’m fucking crazy, that fire does nothing but destroys, but I  _ know  _ that the unquenchable bonfire saved my life. 

I don’t see what people fear when they are eaten by the flame. After all, it’s hardly ever the flame that consumes them. More often, it’s the smoke and the lack of oxygen that is their end, and then the charred body is left to be eaten by the flames. But most of it isn’t the fear of fire, is it? It’s the fear of the pain that comes with the fire. So many people love to watch the flames dance, and lick at the pavement, but when given the opportunity, they never want to truly become that flame. Weak, I think that is. Why can you appreciate the lovely light and heat that the fire gives off without wanting to become that flame? Why do you treat it as a pet, and become terrified when the raging beast shows itself? 

So it’s a fear of pain. It’s a fear of a particular kind of pain, the one that leaves your flesh seared, and leaves you gasping for air. But that’s stupid. Why be afraid of the pain, the screaming in your veins? It’s nothing but pain. Why focus on the burning and the shriveling of your skin, when you could be focusing on the way that the unbearable pain gives way to another sensation, that of ecstasy? Your veins scream out, not in agony, but in joy. You can truly become the light and the heat that rules everything. You can watch as the world burns. You can watch as you yourself burn to ash. 

The desolation controls all. What power does anything else have against the indiscriminate flame that destroys everything? And with that heat in your veins, you can watch it destroy. There is a certain kind of catharsis in watching things burn.

I have always enjoyed watching things burn. When I was a child, I would steal paper towel rolls and matches from the shelf underneath the microwave, and set small fires in the backyard. As I got older, I would light barbecue fires. If there was any kind of fire, be it a camp, or a get together in a suburban backyard, I would be there, the first volunteer to monitor the flame. When I was fifteen years old, I was given the chance to retire a flag. We built a bonfire so bright you could feel it from across the clearing. The heat and the smoke burnt my lungs, and it took me days to stop coughing after that. When I threw the flag in the fire, it went up in a burst of flame, and I could barely see it. I was the one that got closest to the fire, right near the edge of the pit, to make sure that the flag was truly burning, and I breathed in pure heat, felt the blast of it on my face, and that was true joy. I got to feel the brunt of the heat, I was given the chance to all but let the ashes consume me. It was glorious, and it took hours for them for to truly die down. When it died from a blazing bonfire to hot coals, I was the first to stand over the fire pit, and let the still unimaginably hot coals burn me. My leaders told me I was careless, that I shouldn’t have stepped into the fire pit, that I should have waited until the heat was not one you could feel so acutely. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the redness on my hands, on my face, or the way I couldn’t help but cough up a storm from the smoke. I was able to feel the fire. 

And that is what the lightless flame is, but on a much larger scale. An endless bonfire, burning everything in sight. A heat you can feel from miles away, a smoke that engulfs the sky , the fire lapping at the toes of everybody foolish or perhaps, brave enough to get too near it. I get to feel the heat, smell the smoke, watch the fire burn endlessly now. I am ecstatic for the day that everybody else can feel the heat and smell the smoke, and see the glory in the way that I can. 


	3. Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The flesh

I feel detached. My body has never been my own, and I have never owned the flesh that I live in. When I look in a mirror, I do not see my own skin, but rather, I see the skin of a young girl who is distinctly  _ not  _ me.

It’s dysphoria, at least partially. I can look at myself in the morning and see a perfectly healthy woman who is a model for the beauty standards of the world. She is skinny, with a perfect hourglass figure, and wide eyes that give her all the dressings of a princess. That’s me. And I want to rip off my own skin. I look in the mirror and see not feminine assets, but lumps of fat that are  not mine, I want to rip out my own skin, my own bones until my body is finally my own.

This is what draws me to the flesh. There is something to be said for finally feeling as if you are in control.

Humans are made of skin and bone and muscle and sinew, but how many of us feel truly connected to that which covers us? So many people spend years trying to make their skin look younger, trying to fix the way that they look with plastic surgery or other useless treatments. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily, to enjoy adding art to your body, makeup and tattoos, and piercings, but it certainly shows that you are scared of being nothing but meat. People want to be art, not something else that will eventually die and decay like everything else in this world.

But being connected to my entity is something more. I am not simply at peace with the body I have struggled to connect with. I revel in it. I revel in my new flesh, the skin I have built for myself, for it is more than a lump of meat that my consciousness coincidentally resides in. It is me, and I am it. My body finally is my own, no matter what is done to it.

Another thing about me, before I became what I am now that I forgot to mention. I used to pick my skin. Not a product of self loathing, but a way to convince myself that I was truly real, truly  _ there.  _ But despite the scars I left, I could never convince myself of my own reality. 

It was a self fulfilling prophecy. As I picked off my skin, and left scars, I was less and less my own. The sickening purple skin  _ itched.  _ It made me a slave to my own nature, something for others to oggle at, and it changed me, made me something that I wasn’t. I can take pride in what gave me my scars, and tell them as stories, while at the same time feeling a visceral disconnection from everything that had marked me. 

Now I am all scars. Now, the purple and white skin surrounds my body, and I see it as me. It is not merely a facet of myself, but it _is_ me, in every way that matters. And it itches, but it itches and squirms in a glorious way. I finally see that what I am made of has truly become me, and that lets me sleep in peace.

I am finally myself, and I can rejoice in my own body, in the scars and the ribs that poke out, and the slight way that my frame is lopsided. I don’t have to look at the way I curve in on my sides, or the way my chest pokes out, and look at it as if is not me, look at it with the distaste and agony that I did before. My body is subtly changed, to make it more my own. The scars and imperfections are still there, the way they are meant to be, but my curves and fat have smoothed enough that I don’t feel the need to vomit whenever I see myself. I am comfortable, and rather than wishing to be unaware of that which I am, I am constantly aware of how I am built, and finally, finally, I can become myself, something I have never been able to take for granted. 

If you were able to rejoice in your own body, and love the way that you curved, become who you truly are, is that something you would let go? 

Do not think too harshly on me for my choice, for if you had felt the pain of living since you were born, would you choose to pass up a glorious feeling of freedom? Pain or joy. I chose joy, and I am not ashamed that I made this choice, nor am I remorseful. I wanted to be free from the flesh prison that I live in, and now, and now, I finally am. 


	4. Observer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Lonely

Being alone and being Lonely are so often confused as being the same thing. But those are two very distinct things. Yes, you can be lonely while being alone, but true loneliness in its full form is a feeling that only appears when in a room full of laughing, shouting, people.

I enjoy parties. It seems counterintuitive that someone that serves the lonely would enjoy such a raucous, loud, populated activity, but I do enjoy them. I don’t go to a lot of parties, and I didn’t even before I found my entity to serve, since in order to come to parties, you have to be invited, and in order to be invited, you have to have friends. But I was invited to a few small ones. The kind where you get invited out of courtesy, because your classmates realize you overheard them talking about it, and you do all their homework anyway, so really, it would be quite rude to leave you out, and besides, what if you stopped doing all the schoolwork for them? 

I was blessed, or perhaps, cursed with an inordinate amount of empathy, and I very much enjoy seeing other people. Happy or sad, it matters not, I just need to see them raw and uncensored in their true form. A party is perfect to see everybody as who they are. There are the people who genuinely are enjoying themselves in the chaos. They sing with how much they are in their element, among the screams and laughter. You can tell that parties like this is what those people live for. Then there are other types of people, the more interesting kinds of people. There is always at least one person at the party that wants to enjoy themselves, but they aren’t built for social events like this, and they never wanted to come because they  _ know  _ that. That person is always a delicious person to watch at a party, as they desperately try to engage, and as it becomes apparent that isn’t working, they become more and more mortified, until they slowly become smaller, slinking to the very edge of the party, and standing there with a glass of water, waiting for the friend that dragged them along to get tired and drive them home. 

Of course, then you have to at least mention the most boring group of people that come to parties, those that either come so doped up, or get there so fast, they don’t taste like anything. In my opinion, drugs that dull the emotions are the worst way to spend a party. It’s a certain kind of loneliness, but one that doesn't taste like anything more than stale alcohol. 

Finally, there's one last group of people that come to parties, the people that thought they'd enjoy the party, but are stupidly surprised when it all turns out to be too much. Perhaps they just now realized that their friend didn’t really want them to come, and they sidled their way into this gathering by their own social incompetence, or they realize that this really wasn't what they imagined, or they finally are realizing that the one party they went to that they loved was an anomaly in the rest of their life.

Loneliness is not sadness, it is an ache, and one so similar to the ache of nostalgia in your chest. You see others, and you are so close yet so far from the happiness and unfettered joy that they feel, that you can’t help but smile and cry in equal measure. 

I hear the words of others wash over me like waves in the sea, sometimes cool, calm and comforting, but other times as wild and as dangerous as a freak storm. And still, I am not enveloped in the feelings. I am so close, I can feel them hit me, drown me, cover me, but just as waves in a sea, no matter how much the storm buffets me, I can never become the waves. I am still going to be the lonely swimmer. I am so close, yet so far from all others. I am the observer, never the player, and I like it that way. 

After all, the lonely is a blanketing safeness. One cannot get hurt if they are not a character in the story. I am not the writer of the story. If anything, that would be the eye, with their constant need for control and knowledge. No, I am the audience. I am the dedication page of the book, present and watching, but not ever a part of the story. I am invisible, unknown, and knowing, and I love it. 

I will live on the edge of the party, watching. I will live in the sea, covered in a feeling I cannot become. I will live, watching others be something I can never be, and I’ll be damned if that isn’t the best fucking feeling in the world.


	5. Consumption

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The corruption

Corruption is such an ugly word. It reeks of wrongness and unwanted change. The corruption does not reference a change that destroys, but rather a change that creates.

We rather think that the corruption has been misrepresented within the fourteen fears. Words like filth, dirt, and uncleanliness mar the reputation of an entity such as us. Yes, we represent all the dirt and filth that the world has to offer, but there is so much more. So much left to see. In many ways, we are the opposite of the lonely, despite what the eye claims. We represent the togetherness that one can find, for we are never alone, for there are always more than one of us. 

We were once a person. At least, that’s what we remember. We were desperately alone, once, we searched and wandered and were utterly detached. Now, we are not alone. We are not detached. We love. You fear the rot because of the way it feels under your feet. You fear the stench, because of the way your nose wrinkles. You fear so much because of how it makes you feel. But when you become, and I mean truly become, part of us, you do not feel afraid anymore. You will be joyful, for the filth is no longer tasteless grime, the stench no longer that of sickness and disease, and the rot no longer hazardous but wonderful instead. 

It is not that you become unable to feel that which has disgusted you. It is there, but you are able to see it in the way that we see it. Gorgeous. 

There is a feeling when you come home from a long day at work, or a long trip. The feeling of seeing your house exactly as it was, and knowing that it is right. Smelling your own scent, so warm, so comfortable, so safe. There is the feeling of running your hands along your bedsheets, and knowing where everything is, barely having to look. The feeling of having places for everything, and nobody is there to disturb your home. 

That is what being consumed by corruption is like. Coming home from a long day and knowing you are safe, you are there, and everything is right. The smell that others call foul you can now smell as if it were a sweet scent of those who love you. The grime is your cushion, the filth your home. You are not  _ alone  _ anymore. You do not have to worry anymore, for everything that you need is there, with you, consuming you. 

We are together. We are one. We are not alone, and we are not dirty. We love the dirt, we love the bugs, we love each other. We are perfectly ourselves. Why don’t you want to give in to the call? Why do you refuse to join us in our home? Do not worry, for we will protect you, we will take care of you, and you will never be alone again. Is that not utterly wonderful? 


	6. Wailing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stranger

If I smile in a way that sends shivers down your spine, will you give me your fear?

Of course you will.

You thought you knew me once, you thought that we were friends, and you thought that I would be the one to protect you if a  _ thing  _ smiled too wide, waiting to eat you.

We are not friends, and you do not know me. Perhaps you  _ never  _ knew me. No- that isn’t right. You knew me once, or you knew something that was able to imitate me so well that you couldn’t tell. 

One time, a girl ran away from your arms with dirt brown hair and wide white eyes. One time, a person came back to your doorstep with a smile and ink black eyes, and got their revenge. One time, a thing sat on your doorstep and gouged holes in the wood with fingernails too strong to exist. 

You don’t know me. I’ve made myself free from you, and that was a choice I made. 

I saw myself into something different. I never knew what I wanted to be, what my vision for a person was, so I molded my own person out of clay, and scare.

They chose to be scared. I chose to be.

We never trimmed the blueberry bushes, did we? No, we always said we were going to trimm them after the harvest, because they were too big for the nets and obscured the path into the garage, but we never got around to trimming the leaves. 

Partially, because I begged you not to. I loved blueberries, once upon a time. You have to trim a tree to make it grow right, but the small child that hung on your leg and cried about blueberries  didn’t know that. 

That year was the first year we haven’t gone on vacation since we got the bushes. 

We got three blueberries. 

Oh, maybe we got more, I don’t know. I only remember picking three small, sour berries, and my lips puckering as I tried to enjoy the taste. 

There was a robin that got stuck in the net. Nobody else remembers it, but I remember it clear as day, because it was the day I was finally allowed to shave my head. My mom sat me down, and you told me I was going to be ugly because girls and shaved heads didn’t mix. That’s when we saw the robin. You didn’t like it, said it was digging in the garden, but I cried until you set it free safely, and was able to make sure it didn’t have damage to it’s wings. 

I walked into the house with the biggest smile on my face after she shaved my head. 

People don’t say you’re ugly. 

They say you could stand to wear more makeup, that you’re a fucking activist, that you should remember not to be vain, or are you trying to pass yourself off as a boy because you’re a sick deluded girl who thinks she can change her gender, you look  _ so  _ ugly, why don’t you see a therapist? Damn, nobody will ever love you if you keep pretending to be something you’re  _ not,  _ and will  _ never  _ be. Give it up and be what I want you to. 

Or on the flip side. Why do you wear that? Why are you proud of yourself, when you tell me you want to be  _ other.  _ Don’t try to be special. Your fucking chipped nails prove you’re a girl. You’re sick and ugly and you think you can pretend to be like me?

None of them fucking know me anymore, I made sure of that. Maybe they can see the malice in my eyes, which I don’t see the point of masking. I masked myself for so long, I’m damn well not going to do it again. 

My jaw is bruised from clenching it. My hands hurt from the fingernails that I dug into them. 

I don’t want you to see me, I don't want you to know me, I just want you to go away and take the wailing music out of my ears. I have my own opera pounding in the back of my head.


	7. Catharsis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The slaughter

There is blood on my teeth and rage in my veins. 

I am holding a knife of stone.

This is either heaven or hell and I can’t fucking tell the difference.

I  _ love  _ it. 

The slaughter is not all blood and gore and terror and watching those you love perish for no reason imaginable. It is all of that and more, to some extent, but you must look past the death and screams and pain. 

The hunt is never having what you want.

The slaughter is  _ always  _ having what you want. 

It is completion, it is catharsis, it is apotheosis, and it is mine. I have found where I belong, and it is not on the battlefield, watching people tear each other to pieces. It is in the streets watching people stumble home drunk, watching those that hide in the shadows waiting for something that will never come, watching the rats come out and the grime stain the pavement. 

Life is a war of its own, and acceptance is the only way to find your place on the battlefield. 

The streets will not clean themselves of their own volition, the brick cannot be unchipped, the graffiti will only be cleaned with more bloody red paints covering the wall. 

Life is a never ending battle and nobody can win. People will come close, people will kill others and stand on their bloodied bodies until they are known by all. People can certainly lose the war, left dead and broken in an alley, or hungry and begging on the train station, or hurt and damaged and desperate. 

The slaughter is the unfairness of it all. For in the war, we are not the same. The only way to rise to the top is to stain your hands and teeth and smile with the blood of those whose throats you’ve slit, and even if you do that, the bodies can crumble to ash before you can make yourself a mound to stand on. Life is war, and life is hell, and they are two separate and distinct things that only bleed into each other when humans decide they do. 

And now you ask me the question. If I love the slaughter, if it is my god, why do I treat it like this? Why do I describe the dregs of humanity and tell you that the beaten are the beautiful?

Because bloodstains are rubies falling to the floor. 

There is peace in the simplicity of a world that cannot change, and there is peace in knowing that the fight is what you live for. There is catharsis in the smile of a damned man, and whichever side of the fist you’re on, it stings with adrenaline. 

That’s another thing. You can call me a masochist, tell me I’m demented and sick, but the pain is hypnotic. 

I love the feeling of hitting someone hard enough to throw them off their feet, and I love the feeling of them getting back up and cracking my ribs in return. I love running in tandem and watching as the two of us, locked in combat beat each other bloody and bruised, each one being able to return what is dealt to them in equal measure.

I love the smell of the sweat and the blood as you prepare for pain, and I love the smell of stale beer in a warehouse during a fight. I want to feel the sting of the cold and the anger, and the rage, and all of the hidden emotions that can only be released by a black eye and stained shirt. I yearn for pain to own me so fully that all I can hear is the pumping of my veins in my ears, as the pure, unfettered joy of a fight lets me breathe for the first time in millenia. 

The slaughter is not who I worship, for I am a god unto myself. I am the adrenaline and the adrenaline is what I chase, and so I worship myself until I can become exactly who I damn well am. I do not fucking serve the slaughter. I  _ am  _ the slaughter.


	8. No.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Spiral.

There is a ringing in my ears but it is okay because it blocks out the noise. 

There is blood on my tongue because I bit it too hard and now all I can taste is the copper. 

There are shapes swimming in my eyes and I will tear them out.

Nothing makes sense here and I am a lie and I want to scream because I am free and at the same time I am terribly trapped. 

Beautiful. 

Pain.

Lying is a kind of poetry.

Let Tell A

Me You Story.

Once upon a time, we were standing on the deck of a boat. I am leaning over the side and you fall over the edge and into the murky water, and then there is nowhere for them to go but down. We cannot breathe, and I do not know what they should do, and so you are suffocating while they helplessly bump our heads on the bottom of the boat, and it slides over me. You are panicked and screaming but nothing comes out of their mouth save bubbles. And then, we are swallowed by the motor of the gigantic boat, and I stop screaming all at once, because you are free, and they are free, and I am free, and we are free.

All are free. 

Isn’t that something?

It certainly is.

What does it mean to you?

That someday somebody will terminate and all will feel it.

Very good. 

What does it mean to you?

That laughter exists.

I don’t think I understand.

I didn’t expect you to. 

\---

Starlight is a paradox. Did you know that? It is okay if you do not. Millienia, it took me, to learn the workings of the emeralds.

Sapphires are hungry for flesh, because everything has a mouth eventually. 

I don’t think I’ll let them eat me today. 

I am broken broken broken. The record record has stopped stopped working and it it is on a loop loop loop. 

I think I might go hungry hungry hungry today.

\---

There is a ear splitting sound

I 

Think

We

Are

Back

To

Normal.

The

Record

Is

Working

Again.

\---

Good.

\---

There is water in the bottle with the note.

\---

I see it.

\---

This is becoming.

\---

Perfect

and

Pain.


	9. Legacy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The End.

What kind of a life would it be if you simply  _ could not  _ die? 

Dreadfully boring.

I wish to feel as much as one can in one lifetime, I wish to laugh and to cry and to fall and to bleed and I wish that I had enough time that I could experience everything the vast universe has to offer.

I will not. Nobody will, because in the end all we are is a mound of rotting corpses. 

We grow, and we die, and we leave our pitifully small legacy in the hopes that our children will preserve it. If you are lucky, you will last for two generations, for we are all forgotten in the midst of death. You are small, and death will mean nothing after years of pain. 

There are so many stories of death, because nobody wants to admit that there might be nothing. So christians believe in their heaven and their hell, the Greeks believed in their underworld, the  Buddhists believe in their reincarnation, and even those that claim to be non-denominational cannot fathom an existence where they are not there. 

I am only twenty five.

I am not dead yet. I may die tomorrow, and I may live ninety more years and have children, and grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I  _ will  _ die, however. Everybody does, because even if you thwart death and you live through experience after experience, the world will eventually explode and the sun will eat us, and  _ then _ you will be gone and there will be nothing left to preserve your memory but the cold embrace of outer space. 

When I was seven, I nearly got run over by a speeding truck. I didn’t see it coming, and I didn’t see the terror on my parents faces as it barreled past me, missing the back of my head by only an inch. 

When I was eleven, I fell out of a tree and had to get taken to the emergency room. I was lucky that it was only my legs that shattered in the fall. It took three months to get the casts off, and I still have phantom pain that I cannot escape. 

When I was sixteen, I pulled my bowie knife off my shelf and tried to slit my wrists. It was a pathetic effort because I didn’t  _ know  _ pain back then, and every slice of blood I was able to draw sent me into another fit of sobbing, until I cried myself to sleep and looked back on that awful night with a vow of “Never again.”

Let’s be clear. I don’t want to die, and I don’t think I wanted to die when I was sixteen years old. I just know that it is inevitable, and it is better to embrace that then to fear it. After all, who has not wanted to sleep and never wake up? Who has not been so tired and done that they felt they had nothing left to lose?

Death is not pain. Death is a sweet release, whether it comes early or late, and it is mine.

Someday. 

I will end.

And I will laugh.

Because what does life mean if it does not end? 


	10. Seeing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the eye

Have you ever been so thirsty, so desperate, your lips so chapped that you would do anything for a drink of water? That is what serving the eye is like. I know. I know so much. Most of it I will never use, and it will sit in my brain doing nothing of use, but each drop of knowledge quenches my thirst in such a satisfying way I know I would never get this joy from anything else.

Let me tell you a story. The story of a little girl who was scared of everything. This girl was scared of heights, she was scared of squirrels, spiders, of heat, of cold, of people, of light, of darkness, of loneliness, of small spaces, of group projects, of splinters, of water, of disease, of mildew, of so,  _ so _ many things.

That girl was me.

I was scared of the world, so much that I could barely interact with it. I am good at masking emotions, but it was always the kind of fear that meant I wore noise cancelling headphones to the park, meant I never left without a contingency plan. And although that little girl, although _ I _ may have been a coward, I was also determined. Fear was not going to overtake me, so I dove into it headfirst. 

The first time I dove into my fear it was quite literal. I was deathly afraid of the climbing wall at the pool. Being so high, on such a flimsy and slippery surface, then jumping and falling and hurting scared me more than it should have. So I climbed the wall. I may have spent two hours at the pool doing nothing but climbing that damned wall and memorizing the chlorine and pain as the water hit me head on. I was covered in impact burns when I climbed out of the fucking pool. But that was not all, for it meant that I knew how it felt. I had consumed my fear, and it felt exhilarating. 

The second time was in seventh grade. At this time, I was deathly afraid of diseases. Ebola scared me so much I would cry in class. So what did I do? I learned about it. Did you know that Ebola, Zaire Ebola has an 80 percent death rate, and no known cure, although there is a tentative vaccine at this point? Did you know that five nurses once died from holding a baby that had ebola because the child was so touch starved, and our human consciousness gives us incredible empathy? I know that now.

With my fear of Ebola came a fear of flu-like respiratory illnesses. The 1918 flu pandemic was the deadliest flu pandemic in history, and we as a species should be prepared for a worldwide flu-like pandemic to hit near every twenty years. There was a close call in an army camp in the 1950s, and another small scale deadlier than average flu in the 1980s, though it was overshadowed by the AIDS crisis. In the 2000s, SARS and the bird flu hit again. I spent a year researching flus, pandemics, epidemics, and vaccines. Learning death counts and reading horrible anecdotes, and drinking in the fear of others. And after that year, I was rid of my own fear. 

Fear of being murdered. Statistically, most crimes are committed between three and five in the morning, although most robberies are committed between ten and eleven in the morning. You are also more likely to be murdered by a relative than an outsider. 

Fear of Rabies. You can only survive it if you are given the vaccine before you begin to show symptoms. There was a woman who was put in a coma that slowed her brain damage until her body fought off the disease, and although she has permanent damage, she is alive. 

Fear of the ocean. The lowest the tide will ever be in a year is called the neap-tide. The only time you need to be afraid of the ocean is when it is pulling you to the side, rather than back and forth. 

Fear of the dark. I spent two nights sitting uncovered in my dark room, alone, until I was unafraid of whatever could be in there. 

Fear of climate change. The upper middle class will begin to feel the effects of climate change personally around 2050, and 2019 was the last time we could have completely reversed climate change to the way it was before humans. Although wind energy is efficient, if you spend too much time in a wind farm, you start to get sick. Dizziness, headaches, vomiting. We have not figured out why this happens yet.

Fear of being manipulated. Did you know that it is incredibly easy to create false memories? This is why gaslighting is an effective tactic. In fact, you do not even need to say something rational to manipulate a person, all you need to do is use open, non threatening body language, and people believe you. Flattery is a mind-blowingly effective manipulation tactic. 

I drank in fear, and I drank in knowledge. The more I learned, the less I was afraid, despite the gruesome nature of the knowledge I acquired. Somehow, even when I learned that things were worse than I thought before, the knowledge I had was comforting, and it sucked away my fear.

I also learned people. People are hard, you know? It is the hardest thing in the world to predict the moves of another person, so I didn’t even try. But what I could learn were backups.

Let me explain. When a person talks, you have to come up with another thing to say on the spot. When you learn a person, no matter what they say, you know what will soothe them, or make them feel listened to. It’s not about predicting the moves of another, it’s about knowing enough that you have a response prepared from the beginning. I never knew what a person was going to say next, I never knew what tone their voice was taking, and I certainly was never able to manipulate the conversation. I knew so much that I didn’t have to. Whatever they said, I knew a response that fit perfectly in the puzzle they had built. That in and of itself was glorious knowledge. 

That is why the eye calls to me. Because there is a thrill in terrible knowledge. Because there is wonderful control in Knowing, no matter how much the knowledge hurts. 

There has never been a time in my life I have not wanted to know. If somebody wanted me dead, that was something I needed to know, because it was better to be the one holding the cards. If I made a mistake, no matter how inconsequential, knowing meant I could rearrange my plans.

I have to know. There is a thirst for knowledge, terrible knowledge, beautiful knowledge, awful knowledge, and I crave to taste all knowledge, and let it pummel me like a person underneath a waterfall. Forever. 


	11. Engulfed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The buried

Have you ever wanted to be trapped under the crushing weight of blankets, of another body, of peace? No? That’s a shame. It is wonderful, like receiving a warm hug from the earth itself. Like everything on the planet loves you, and wants to keep you in its embrace, and if you just stopped struggling, everything would be fine. Like nothing matters under the weight of your own soul, because you can stay forever, content to let the world forget you and pass you by, and you aren’t afraid of it. Because you are truly and deeply, in love. 

When I was nine years old, my favorite thing in the world was to dig pits. I don’t particularly know why, other than the dirt that mesmerized me. If I dug a particularly large pit, I got the reward I had waited for, as well. I was able to climb inside the hole and stay there for hours, smelling dirt and seeing nothing but blackness. As I grew older, I was unable to dig holes large enough to crawl in, and I started up public school. I was a very closed off child, so I suppose that was for the best, me getting to know other kids and all that.

Another thing about me- I have always been small. Small enough, in fact, that I was quickly able to impress the other students in my middle school by shoving myself in lockers and closing the door on myself as teachers went past. The teachers didn’t find it nearly as impressive as the students. Nevertheless, sometimes I was already in the locker when a teacher came by, and my friends would stand surreptitiously around the locker I was in, and make small talk until the teacher went away. I once spent nearly ten minutes trapped inside the cool, dark cave of the locker. It was the best ten minutes of my life. To listen, and not be seen. To be utterly closed off from everything else, only sitting there in the darkness, waiting. 

As I got older, I grew again, and I could no longer fit myself inside lockers without leaving a truly excellent amount of scars around my hips and waist. But that was fine, all I needed to do was find another small space that fit me like it was made for me. The answer was pipes. Okay, okay, I sound like an utter weirdo, but you have to understand, there is a job market for repairing pipes. Not the little ones in houses, but the huge ones that pump water from the towers and the ground up to people's houses. I became an expert at repairing pipes, and inspecting them. It was hours alone, hours in the cold darkness, water dripping on me- or perhaps at me, in a space I had to duck to stand in. I was the only person with any light source, and I was eager to turn it off and let the darkness and the walls of the tunnel envelop me. 

It was crushing. It was stifling. It was horrifying. It was, above all,  _ freedom. _

I was perfectly alone. Not as if I was lonely, or isolated, but I was able to spend hours in the echoing tunnels, meters beneath the earth, and hear my own heart pound inside my chest.

At any time the tunnels could have crushed me. At any time I could have died. I hit the sides of the tunnels until they vibrated, I let the dirt fall over my shoulders, I wanted to let the earth consume me. And it wouldn’t! It wouldn’t take me. I felt empty, I felt alone, I felt as if the love that I had waited for, the power I had pledged myself to would never let me join it. 

I did something drastic, something that could be considered stupid if I wasn’t so desperate. I collapsed in the tunnel. I let it take me and I breathed in the wet dirt, and I was reborn. 

Finally, finally, I can be engulfed. Finally, I can let the earth fold over me. Finally, I can be forgotten, and finally I can truly be myself.


	12. Excommunication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt

I can feel the burning in my blood. Not the fire that the desolation loves, but a different, restrained kind of fire. A drive. The kind of fire that makes me set my jaw and narrow my eyes and get things  _ done. _

I love the hunt, and in turn, I think the hunt loves me back. Why wouldn’t it? Why wouldn’t it embrace me like a child, for it is my proud parent, and it sets me loose to run. There is no safety net. There is no way to turn the television off and bring it back to monotony. This is my  _ life,  _ and I love it.

The call started when I was young. I was the best. I was the best reader in the entire second grade class in the school. And then, when I got older I had the highest test scores in my class, and when I got older I took AP class after AP class and I won every single damn competition that was set up. I was the best in the school, I was the best in the workplace, I was the best at everything I wanted to be. The drive kept me in check, kept me doing what I needed to continue to be the best. 

But that is stifling. With work, with school, with everything in life, there is a glass ceiling. Especially when you’re the smallest, most rabid little bitch that anybody had to ever put up with. I left. I went bigger, I moved from company to company with my stellar portfolio of projects and my ever growing list of skills.

And then I died.

Not literally. No, I pushed this stupid, frail,  _ weak  _ human body to a place it wasn’t supposed to be, and I passed out. I fell down three flights of stairs before somebody caught me and brought me to a hospital. I was prescribed rest. For three months. Three months of sitting in a bed, doing nothing, alone. 

The thing about being the best? About chasing what you can be and what you want to be and finally achieving the ambitions you’ve pushed yourself to reach? It leaves you with very few friends. 

Nobody came to visit me in that sterile, fragile hospital bed. Nobody even called to ask if I was doing well, if I was healing. Except my boss, who politely fired me. Motherfucker. I spent so long pushing to go above and beyond that I truly was above and beyond- only it was horribly lonely.

I screamed. I cried. I showed weakness that was frankly embarrassing, and I’m glad I had no friends to see me reach the breaking point. And I gave myself to the hunt.

Suddenly, I had something to strive for. There was a fire in my veins, and it wasn’t calling for me to achieve that promotion, to buy that house. It was calling for me to hunt, to run, to chase unrestrained and free. 

I didn’t get tired, either. I could run for miles and for hours and for days without ever needing to stop. I was hungry, I was thirsty, and my muscles ached and groaned for me to stop, but I didn’t need to.I could push on. 

The last thing that the hunt gave me was the most important. The one I simply cannot live without. It gave me a pack to rely on. A pack to live with and to lean on and people that would watch me and cover my six, in exchange for me watching their back. It is true that the pack will turn on you for any weakness that it sees, but doesn’t everyone? The pack just has the most clear cut rules of what you do to get excommunicated. People watched me and I wasn’t weak, and I watched them, and they weren’t weak. It was almost like having friends. People to rely on, and people to trust that they would do what they were supposed to. People to talk with, who would listen to me talk about my drive, and my next hunt, and my ambition for hours. And in return, I got to hear their stories. 

I said that it was like having friends, but I am told that friendship is different from having packmates. So no, the pack is not like having friends, but it is like being in a group project, studying a topic that you love, and everybody else does all of their work up to par with your own standards. Minds work the same and there aren't arguments over how the project is to go, and nobody lets down the group. There is no leader because we are unified and aligned in purpose. So no, the pack is not friendship, for it is stronger than a weak link such as that. We are bound together by necessity.

This is why I love the hunt, this is why it calls for me, and so I will let it take me, and I will rise up higher and higher and finally chase my goal. Forever. I love to run, and run free with fire in my veins and bloodlust in my heart is exactly what I will do.


	13. Sanctified

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dark.

Blindness. One of the oldest fears, perhaps only second to the end.

Darkness, a fear every child must overcome, a fear that is only one a silly adult could ever have.

Fools. Darkness is more than the fear of the simple black that permeates light. No, it is fear of the unknown, what you cannot see, what is lurking just behind you in the darkness.

I’m not afraid of what I cannot see. Ignorance is bliss is an oft repeated phrase, and it is true. What you cannot see is not there. It is a tale as old as time. The child covers its eyes to play hide and seek, the ostrich sticks its head in the mud, and people, grown adults, they do the same thing. 

I think the night is glorious. It is a time of peace, of space, where nobody will disturb you, because there is something special about the darkness. It is intimate. A tree is nothing, a car is nothing, a person is nothing- until it is shrouded in the inky blackness of the night. Then it becomes important, something to watch, something sacred. 

The dark anoints things. 

But there is more than the moonlit darkness. There is wonderful, terrible darkness that no lights can reach. That is blindness, that is not knowing, that is fear. For some people. For others, it is freedom. I could sit alone in the dark for hours, for weeks, and I have, for when the world is too much to handle, all the sights and the sounds and the buzzing, and the people and the lights, it can go away. There can never be true silence, for there is alway the chirping of birds, or the rustle of the wind, or the buzzing of electricity barely noticeable. But true darkness? That is attainable.

I used to go down to caves, to tunnels, to hiding places, and let the darkness make me sacred. There, there was no sight. There was final peace. 

And as I have mentioned before, there is a freedom in not knowing what waits for you. Oft I wake up in the night to a scream, a sight, a feeling, and the darkness means that it does not matter in  the slightest.

When I was fifteen, my mother screamed my name at three in the morning. It was pitch black, and so whatever lurked in the darkness that forced her to yell for her child did not matter, and it did not exist. 

Another time, I woke up in the dark of night to feel something brushing my face. Not hair, for I do not have any of that, but it was something. I think it was a bug. Thousands of mites crawling on my face, my skin, my bed at night. But the darkness means that it is inconsequential.

Am I a madman? Am I crazy for my disregard of the things that go bump in the night? Am I a fool, or a child? I don’t think so, for that which lies in the darkness is the greatest treasure. 

I worship the dark, and it looks kindly on me. I love the dark, and it covers me with safety, blankets me with warmth, and I do not want to leave its burning embrace. 

I am safe in my ignorance. It is bliss, I suppose, and I love what I cannot see. The darkness makes me holy, and in turn I belong with it. 


	14. Intricate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The web

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for web things, like control, ect.

I don’t control you. You make your own choices, your own actions, and if they happen to align with what I want, oh well. You made that choice. 

It’s selfishness to blame your own mistakes on someone else, you made the choice. You turned that doorknob, you said hello to that person, I didn’t do a damn thing to screw you over. 

“We were friends,” you can say, but what does that entail? It’s not my job to protect you from yourself, and I’m not your keeper.

You made your choice, and I made mine, and mine worked, and it’s not  _ wrong  _ to step on bodies to get to the top. They were already dead in the first place. 

Compassion. A fools toy, someone who wants others to cover for them.

Every man- or woman, I suppose, for themself. I’m going to play off of everything that you do, and it’s not my fault you can’t see the intricacies in the tapestry. 

You’ve heard the story of Arachne, right? I’d be surprised if you hadn’t. She thought she was better than the gods, so Athena challenged her and turned her into a spider, a cautionary tale, what-the-fuck-ever. 

The moral is this: “Pride isn’t becoming to mortal people.”

So what? She got what she wanted, she’s the mother of all spinners, and she got to spin for the rest of her life, beautiful, intricate creations that nobody ogled at, that were solely there to please her own eyes, to trap the unsuspecting, to help herself. She played Athena, the goddess of wisdom like a cheap-ass fiddle. 

And now she’s the weaver we know. Penelope, tragic, forgotten, Athena, no longer worshipped, any artist you can name, faded into oblivion, for nobody cares. 

She’s a  _ spider,  _ and we still watch them spin with fear and awe, searching for the knowledge they have. 

A spider's thread is six times stronger than steel, that’s a fun fact. 

My mind works six times faster than yours, and it’s not like I made those choices for you. 

Would you, pray tell, have died for me, if I had asked? If I had fallen to my knees and asked for help, if I had prayed to you and begged for forgiveness, would you have given me what I asked  for?

There are many things we can credit fear for, one of the most brilliant is completion. You saw the big picture, and it was beautiful, and I was right behind the eyes, and so I let you die for me. 

After all, you made that choice.


End file.
